Physics Colloquium, January 11, 2005

Detection of Miniature Black Holes Produced in Collisions at the Future Large Hadron Collider

Thomas Humanic

The Ohio State University

Recent theoretical work in extra-dimensional quantum gravity has suggested that the Planck mass may be lowered to the TeV level. Under this condition, it may be possible to produce short-lived miniature Black Holes in proton-proton and Pb-Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN [1]. The LHC is scheduled to begin delivering beams of colliding protons (and eventually colliding Pb-nuclei) by the end of 2007. If produced, such mini-BH's would decay via Hawking radiation into mostly Standard Model particles such as pions, kaons, nucleons, photons, etc., which can be detected in the experiments presently being constructed for the LHC (i.e. ATLAS, CMS, ALICE...). In this talk I will sketch the arguments which lead to the predictions for these novel objects, and then show some quantitative calculations for the hadronic signatures of BH decays that one might see in LHC detectors, in particular in the ALICE Experiment.

[1] S. Dimopoulos and G. Landsberg, Phys.Rev.Lett 87,161602(2001).

3.30 p.m., Smith Laboratory, Room 1005

Refreshments served in Smith 1094 at 3:00 p.m.